A. Arthur - Hunger for You

By that I mean that for the three years, since I walked out of my mother’s house in Suitland, Maryland, on the morning of July 4, I have been an independent, self-sufficient female. I don’t need a boyfriend, but I don’t shy away from the opposite sex either, regardless of the horrible things I was forced to see sexually. I’ve never been to any type of counseling, unless you include the detailed diary I’d kept since the first night he’d entered my bedroom. Whenever things became too quiet in my mother’s house I reread pages in that diary to remind myself how sick the man my mother had married really was and to never let down my guard around him, no matter what.

I never reported the abuse because I knew my mother was also culpable, and despite how disappointed I was in her for not kicking that lowlife perverted bastard out of her house after he knocked her out the first time, I didn’t want to see her in jail. Books were my friend, the library my safe haven, and they had been since I was five years old. So when it all started, I read books about it happening to others. I knew what rights I had and I knew exactly what would happen if I told someone. Some days I didn’t care, some days I just wanted him dead or, at the very least, gone from my sight forever. There were two specific times that I almost called the police. I told myself there wouldn’t be a third time. But my eighteenth birthday came first and I left.

He’s probably still beating and raping my mother. She doesn’t want to be saved, so I stopped thinking about saving her long ago.

All these thoughts flooded into my mind the moment Dex grabbed my wrist. My body had shivered all over, my vision going blurry in those next few seconds. Bile rose in my throat and I thought for sure I would lose it right there in the middle of the bar, in front of all those people. And then the part of me that I’d hidden so well would surely be revealed. I would be devastated.

Swallowing deeply, taking deep breaths had helped. I hadn’t vomited, nor had I fainted or broken out into hysterical screams. I’d stood perfectly still, breathing, while his fingers were so tight I knew there would be a bruise tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I hated that there would be a bruise tomorrow.

I’d been seeing him for about five weeks now. He’d come into the bar late one night and looked like a brooding hero, like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights . His thick eyebrows almost gave him a unibrow; the sharp features of his face gave him an edgy kind of attractiveness that for whatever reason I was drawn to. Our first date had been a little awkward. We saw a movie—a vampire flick—and then had drinks at another bar where two of his friends joined us. I’d been nervous for the first couple of moments but then Dex acted all possessive of me and I felt safe. Tonight, I didn’t feel safe at all.

Until the other guy’s hand touched mine.

Okay, maybe I was romanticizing things. I had a habit of doing that, seeing heroes everywhere I looked, ones that matched the heroes I read about in all the romance novels I downloaded on my e-reader. I was thirteen when I read my first adult romance book and I’d been hooked since then. Sure there were more age-appropriate books, now more than ever actually, but I knew what I’d fallen in love with, I knew what made my heart beat fast, my smile spread, and what kept hope alive for me. It was the romance.

See, I was doing it again, romanticizing the idea of some guy that came into the bar every night drinking beers like they could drown away whatever bad things that had taken place in his life. I mean, I assumed bad things had happened because he had the biggest, saddest, dark brown eyes I’d ever seen. He usually ate like he was starving, except tonight he didn’t and before Dex had come in I’d been wondering why.

I wondered about him a lot, more than I guess I should have since technically I was going out with Dex. But there was something sort of lonely about him, something that pulled me to him every time he entered the bar.

Then the mystery guy had appeared right in front of me, our fingers brushing as we both attempted to pick up the same receipt. I pulled away because it felt like I’d touched a live electrical wire. To be quite honest, it sort of felt like a door had been opened inside of me. Things had begun to happen inside instantly—my boobs tingled, nipples puckering, my thighs shook, wanting to clench right there to stall the slow throbbing that had begun between my legs.

For his part—the guy that held more of my attention than I thought was necessary—he didn’t seem as bothered by the touch as I did. Sure, he’d looked at me strangely, but he always did that. Guilt came next, like a stinging slap against the back of my head. I was dating Dex. This other guy shouldn’t turn me on, or intrigue me, or both.

He’d left the bar about an hour ago and yet I was still standing here thinking about him when I should be counting up my last receipts.

“Your guy Dex was looking all kinds of delicious tonight, girl,” Hanna said once she’d slipped onto the bar stool, crossed one leg, and pulled her four-inch heeled ankle boot off. She was rubbing her foot as she continued to talk. “Who was his friend? I swear he comes in here with the sexiest guys but none of them talk much. I must have rubbed my tits against his back four or five times and he never even blinked my way. Jerk.”

Hanna was twenty-three and had been working in bars since she was sixteen. She was the one who’d given me the heads-up about the wonderful accommodations I now lived in and given Roy, the manager here, a superior—albeit fake as hell—reference for me to get this job. I felt like I owed her one, but really, I would have been friends with her even if she hadn’t done those things, because Hanna was nice, beneath her tough exterior and heavily made-up face. She was also loyal and I needed a little bit of that in my life.

“This was a new guy. I’ve never seen him before,” I told her while I finished adding the last of my receipts.

“Do they work for him or something? Where do they come from? They look all dark and exotic.” Hanna smiled as she thought about it.

I shook my head, wrapping a rubber band around all my receipts to keep them all neat and straight, then clapping them onto the bar. Roy was a stickler for neatness around here.

“I’ve never said more than hi and bye to any of them. They show up, Dex talks to them, and then they go.”

I learned a long time ago not to ask questions I really didn’t want the answers to. It’s not that I had anything against Dex’s friends, I just didn’t like them. Not the way I liked Dex. But what did I know? I was still trying to figure out why I didn’t get the same physical reactions from Dex as I did from the mysterious stranger with the sad eyes.

“Ooooh, mysterious,” Hanna said. “So what does Dex do? Is he some kind of drug dealer? Because if so you need to cut his ass loose. The last thing you need is to get caught up in some kind of raid. My sister, Jenna, got caught with drugs in her house because her boyfriend was hiding shit in her vent. She got a PBJ and five years’ probation, has to go downtown and piss in a cup every Monday morning by court order. It sucks!”

I nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly with Hanna’s conclusions. “No, I’m definitely not trying to have any run-ins with the law. He said his uncle runs some type of business down in Alexandria and he’s working there with him.”

“Oh, okay, that sounds cool,” Hanna said, taking off the other boot and letting it fall to the floor. “You do good in tips tonight?”

“Enough to pay my cable bill,” I reported with a smile.

“You go, girl.” Hanna gave me a high five and we went around turning the chairs up onto the tables talking about the next time we were off and splurging on a spa day.